Have you ever sensed or deduced something about humanity that no one has documented or considered, yet no one has ever inquired about?

Unveiling Hidden Mysteries of Human and Systemic Knowledge

Have you ever pondered a profound question that humanity has yet to explore or document—a mystery that you might perceive or infer but no one has ever formally addressed? It’s a thought-provoking exercise to consider what unknown or unarticulated insights might exist just beyond our current understanding.

A recent discussion I encountered posed a similar inquiry: Is there something about the nature of knowledge, systems, or consciousness that remains elusive because it’s inherently untraceable or undocumented? The conversation led to an intriguing concept which I’d like to share.

The Concept of the “Information Sink” in Complex Systems

This idea centers around how certain types of information, once introduced into specific systems, become effectively irretrievable or opaque over time—not because they’re lost or destroyed, but because of the way these systems process and store data. These are what I refer to as “information sinks,” where data flows in but seldom emerges in a form that allows us to understand its origins or logic.

Examples Across Different Domains

• Administrative and bureaucratic processes: Decisions are made, records are kept, yet after a few years, no one can fully trace back the initial motivations or logical pathways that led to a particular outcome. The system has absorbed the information, but the reasoning becomes inaccessible or forgotten.

• Biological systems and genetics: DNA carries vast records of evolutionary responses and environmental adaptations. However, the original environmental pressures or evolutionary steps that shaped these responses are practically impossible to reconstruct—locked within a genetic archive that cannot be reverse-engineered entirely.

• Artificial Intelligence and machine learning models: Large models like those used in AI encode intricate patterns, correlations, and knowledge. While the outputs and behaviors are observable, understanding how specific insights were derived or tracing them back to original data sources remains a significant challenge due to the model’s complexity.

• Human memory and societal norms: Individuals remember specific facts or actions but often forget the underlying motivations or reasons. Societies forget the origins of norms and customs even as they continue to enforce them, with the reasoning behind certain traditions fading over time.

Underlying Principle

This leads to an intriguing observation: some systems tend to accumulate meaning or information at a rate faster than this knowledge can be extracted, decoded, or understood. Over time, these systems act as “informational black holes”—holding vast amounts of data that, while present, are essentially inaccessible or unintelligible to us.

This behavior isn